Child’s Play – Akshara Rajaram

After many months of deliberations based on the dates suggested by Georgian, Victorian, Tamilian, Google, Flight and What-Not Calendars, we finally ended up at Tirupati for Akshara’s first mottai/Tonsure of head/Mundan/haircut. We were in for some royal treatment, thanks to some high-profile connections. So, the barber came over to our room rather than we going to the common area for the mottai. Akshara had witnessed Laya’s (her cousin) mottai and after having seen what Laya went through, she was very clearly not interested in the whole thing. But, after explaining her the benefits of a haircut (e.g. you get loooooong hair) and many such fictional stories, she was “ok” with the idea and was eager (presumably) for her first mottai.

But, it was much smoother than expected, thanks to modern technology. We showed a video of Laya speaking/singing a rhyme and Akshara thought that she was having a video conversation with her and got distracted. The mottai was done and Akshara was happy about it to the extent that she didn’t want to have a head-bath as she felt that the “mottai” would go away!

Her hairless condition meant that she could get ready at a moment’s notice to go out

Couple of weeks back, orbis school had organised a fancy dress event with the theme being “A community helper”, which incidentally was one of the themes in Tree House last year, when she went dressed up as a police woman/security guard. This year, she dressed up as a Dhobi/Laundry Wala, which kind of blended with her current hairstyle (or the lack of it).

written by Rajaram S

The only thing they didn’t do was to throw the hats up in the air after the photo session!

written by Rajaram S

Treehouse was having its annual fancy dress event. Akshara’s batch (the playschool group) was asked to choose costumes of any cartoon character. We searched east, west, north and south in Pune to find a good costume for her. But, the only ones which every store had were the costumes of Spiderman and Superman! For girls, it was only the Rabbit costume! We were given the reference of 2 stores close to M.G.Road which specialized in carnival costumes. But, they were giving them only for rent and by the look of the dresses, it seemed that they needed 2 or 3 rounds of dry cleaning before one could wear it.

Finally, Vidhya decided to go the DIY way. We got a polka-dotted dress and with the help of few accessories, we convinced Akshara that she looks like Minnie Mouse. Surprisingly, Akshara managed to keep on the headgear on her head all the time.

We were very apprehensive of how Akshara would react on walking on to the stage. She had never been on a stage before and given her aversion to huge crowds, we sensed that it may not go as expected. But, she walked onto the stage, didn’t cry or do anything traumatic. Instead, she did her usual ostrich-thing (if i don’t look at you, that means you are not looking at me!). It was a great day in the end with Akshara and her pals enjoying their fancy dresses and fancy looks!

The best part was when she even uttered “Minnie Mouse” on the stage. This was it, her first words on a stage – “Minnie Mouse”

Then, one day we were told that the class is currently being taught about community workers and that the kids should come dressed up as one. So, off we went again in search of “community worker” and the shopkeepers recommended Spiderman (again!), a monkey, an elephant and few others who would be better off in the jungle rather in the city. By luck, we came across a military uniform in one of the shops. We were impressed by the dress (and also tired of searching) and agreed with Akshara that she would go as a military officer. She even practised the march past that she had originally learnt for the sports day.

But, what happened in the 30 minutes before she left for school was unexpected. We were finding it difficult to get Akshara to understand the “Military Officer” concept. So, we changed the costume name to that of a policeman (or woman). She knew the “policeman” very well, with us having used his name often while travelling in the car to get her to sit in one place. The Policewoman was all ready and we started for school. Once she got out of the lift and saw someone, she had a sudden realization! A realization that her costume looked similar to the one worn by the Magarpatta Security guys!!! So, in an instant, she rechristened herself as “Security”. We had no choice, but to go with this newly renamed costume. Thus, the story ended with Akshara dressing up as a “Security” person. She even gave a demo of how a magarpatta security person would be discharging his duties…

With Hari dressed up as a “Vegetable Seller”, Akshara good a good opportunity to demonstrate the useless activities which the security people here do, like checking each and every vegetable for bomb-like symptoms, but ignoring big packages with “bomb” written on them!

The fact that the TV channels were showing Salman’s dance in Munni Badnam Hui too often was clearly visible with Akshara displaying various dance moves in her “security” costume.

written by Rajaram S

How do you get a bunch of 2.x year olds to understand the concept of a race with a starting line and a finish? Seems daunting, but Akshara’s school Tree-House managed it extremely well. It was an entertaining day at the races, both for the kids and the parents!

Akshara wasn’t quite sure as to where we were taking her on that morning. But, on the ground, once she familiar faces, she settled down quite well. Before the races began, Shriya and Akshara decided to have warm-up laps of the ground. But they took it too seriously and ended up making it a very tiring walk for her teachers to go and fetch them back.

Every kid was made to wear a “fruit” tag around the neck and it was called a fruit-race, probably to make it interesting for the kids. Akshara was all set for the race, but i guess the teachers forgot to teach one important thing about the starting point. They forgot to tell Akshara the direction in which the race was supposed to be run! And Hari, he just wasn’t interested in running with the girls. He wanted something more challenging!

The actual race happened very fast. While her teacher said “Ready, steady, go!” and the kids started running, Akshara was still busy waving to the crowds. So, one of the teachers had to pull her along for the race. Unfortunately, the teacher was a slow runner

So, Akshara ended up getting a participation certificate and was clearly thrilled about the piece of paper she can play with!

But Shriya had a different plan up her sleeve. While other races were going on, she decided to usurp the first place on the podium. She also tried to convince the chief guest to have a separate presentation ceremony, just for the photographs.

There was also the parent-daughter race in which Akshara and Vidhya put up a creditable effort. There was also some parents who forgot the fun aspect and were desperate to win resulting in the first-aid boxes being used!

To ensure that the parents don’t feel left out, a parents race (Three-legged race) was also organised. Vidhya and I ensured that we got enough photography mileage out of it

On the whole, it was a very well organised event and Kudos to TreeHouse for this.

written by Rajaram S

We have been trying to teach Akshara to smile for photographs for quite some time now. She smiles normally during regular conversations, but her smile takes a totally different flavour when done for photographs! Neither i or Vidhya smile like this, so she definitely didn’t pick this up from us.

We do hit the purple patch sometimes, but that depends on the combination of the luck of the photographer and the camera! Also, it does help if Laya is next to her to get her in the good mood for photographs.

So, we started trying out different things when the smile just doesn’t get going. Thanks to one of Vidhya’s cousins, Akshara was introduced to the “surprise” look. Though this is not the equivalent of a smile, this definitely looks better on a photograph.

But, this too doesn’t guarantee results, as the “surprise” sometimes becomes extremely contorted.

We were at the grahapravesham function of my b-i-l in Chennai and Vidhya wanted a lot of the girls-only snaps with many of her cousins and their kids at the function. This was easier said than done with every kid wanting to do its own thing (actually everyone other than Laya and Akshara were a bit older and co-operated with the requests).

All of us were munching on some snacks and we gave some to Laya and Akshara too. Then, we noticed that they were so busy on the snacks that they readily agreed to pose for all the photo requests and that too with a smile! Ok, it doesn’t matter if their hand is always in or close to the mouth in all photographs.

So, there it was, the perfect trick to getting to do all the things you want for a photograph. But, there are some finer aspects to take care, as we learnt along the way.

Always ensure that the size or the quantity of the snack you give (in case there is more than one kid) is same or at least looks the same from the viewpoint of the kids. There will definitely be an investigation as to whether the other one is bigger and if it happens to be so, you can just forget your nice-smile photographs and look forward to some war footage.

If you have seen the eclairs ad running currently on the channels, the drummer keeps feeding the bald guys to ensure that they have their mouths full. Similarly, always ensure that there is an ample supply of snack for all the kids. On thing you can do is to strategically get an adult to keep the supply chain on , away from the view of the camera , but caught by the other camera in the second photo below.

written by Rajaram S